


This isn't the right time (because it's never the right time)

by Haru207



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Ace/Non-Ace, Angst, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Coming Out, F/M, How Do I Tag, Self-Hatred, This 4k monstrosity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 11:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11850627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haru207/pseuds/Haru207
Summary: Somewhere along the way, they became friends. She came to that realization one day when:He told her, in an eerily calm voice, thumbs tracing over every single burn he could find on her hands and wrists, that if she cares about her baking career at all, then she will stop sacrificing sleep in favour of watching k-dramas until the wee hours of dawn; andShe finally took note of the fact that it may have possibly been well over two weeks since she last saw him drinking coffee in the store, and when she pointed this out, he hid his mouth behind a cup that smelled suspiciously like apple cinnamon tea and mumbled about how a ‘certain someone’ kept telling him too much coffee was bad for him.She remembers how they became friends, how they became lovers, and every moment in between.





	This isn't the right time (because it's never the right time)

**Author's Note:**

> ...I wrote this a week ago, posted it on Tumblr, swore I was going to delete that post and not cross-post to AO3. And well, while the former did happen, the latter...  
>  I honestly don't even know what this is, it's a jumbled mess that originally started out as a fanfic in my head, except when I put it down into written words, it kinda got out of hand with how utterly dramatic everything is so I had to backtrack and (re-)invent the characters, and this is the result.

This is her boyfriend, she tells herself, repeats it like a mantra in her head, as if that will somehow be enough to make herself numb to the sensation of someone’s lips on hers, to stop the feeling of dread rising up in her stomach.

It has certainly worked before.

 

Except today isn’t one of those days.

 

Because right now, all she can feel is saliva on her lips, a hand sneaking under her shirt, fingers brushing over her hips, then her lower back, and suddenly it’s all too much for her to bear.

She pushes him away, as abruptly as he did when he dived in to kiss her earlier, and wipes her mouth against the back of her hand.

Jaiden looks at her in surprise.

A few beats of silence ensue, before he crouches down so they are at eye level and asks in a gentle voice: “Did I move too fast again?”

More silence.

“I’m sorry. That wicked grin on your face, it always drives me a little mad, and I just wasn’t able to stop myself this time. I’m sorry.”

Guilt makes its way back into her heart, like it always does in these moments. She doesn’t know what to say to him, mind still too frazzled, nerves still going haywire. So when his hand reaches out to grab hers in a gesture that is meant to be comforting, her body reacts on pure instinct by jerking backward, hitting the wall behind her much too hard.   

She manages to hold in the whimper despite the pain, afraid that if she lets the sound escape, he will feel even worse, even though this is all her fault.

Her fault for not telling him right from the beginning.

 

When she finally looks up at him again, the love and concern that shine in his eyes are more than what she can handle at this moment.

 

There are days when she finds herself hating him with every fiber of her being, filled with so much loathing (towards herself, towards him, there’s no clear line), wishing that she could just undo everything, wishing that she never met him in the first place, so that she wouldn’t be stuck here in this place, scared out of her mind at the prospects of being ‘together’, but also dreading the day when there is no _together_ at all, and she wonders, not for the first time, which one she was most afraid of, and who she hates more.  

(She already knows the answer to her questions.)

 

So even though this isn’t the right time— _because it’s never the right time_ —she still has to do it. Has to tell him the truth at last. 

Because she wants to be brave for at least once in her life.

 

 

 

 

“Ace?”

“It’s short for asexual.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means I don’t feel sexual attraction.”

“Wha-”

“It’s not the same as celibacy, because that is a choice, whereas me being ace is a part of who I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, because I do, Jaiden, I do. Asexuality doesn’t mean I can’t feel attraction, doesn’t mean I can’t have romantic feelings. It just simply means that I don’t find kissing all that pleasurable, or any other sexual activities for that matter…”

Jaiden is staring at her blankly. He opens his mouth a few times but nothing comes out. She has never seen him like this, so completely at loss for words. Jaiden Kim has always known what to say in almost every situation, even if they sometimes come out as gibberish, because even then, even then, he still doesn’t regret it. Doesn’t regret making a fool out of himself if it means he can bring a smile to her face when she’s having a bad day. So seeing him like this, unable to make a single sound in her presence, breaks her heart just a little bit more.

“I-I’m sorry, Jaiden. I know I had promised that I’d always try my best to be honest with you, that I’d always blurt out the things that come to my mind, however blunt they may be, but this…this part of me, I-I didn’t know how I could ever tell you about it. There were times where I managed to work up the courage to tell you, but then I see you smiling at me, lips curled at the fringes like they often do, while holding my hand, and I can’t bring myself to. I see the desire on your face to kiss me with all you have, even though you always ended up holding yourself back because I once told you to slow down your pace a little with me, because it’s all very new to me, a-and I, I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t bear to _imagine_ the day your lips stop curling up at the very sight of me, the day you tell me that you can no longer be with me…”

Her nails are digging crescents into her palm, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

“W-When I imagined you doing that, I feel as if all the breath had been knocked out of me, and…I come to realize that I have fallen way too deep for you. Even though I had repeatedly told my heart not to do that, giving itself away to someone and allow that person the ability to trample all over it, when they find out I have no interest in having sex with them…now or any time in the future. These were the words I carved into my heart…on the day Liam, the only boy I ever loved before you, walked away from me, the day the two of us became strangers. If not for that incident with my brother, I don’t think I would have ever told you about my feelings. I was too scared of the rejection I know for sure will appear on your face when I finally tell you about my asexuality. But against my better judgment, I kept falling and falling harder for you each and every day, because Jaiden, you make it so _easy_ to do so, to put down the shield I’ve always placed over my heart the past four years, to fool myself in thinking that I could possibly have you…when I couldn’t give all of me to you. You deserve so much better than that, Jaiden. You deserve someone who can actually show you how much they love you, with all their heart and body. You deserve to know the truth. Even if that truth will be the very thing that undoes all that we have and all that can ever be. Because I love you. Because I love you enough…to let you go.”

 

There’s nothing but a hazy blur before her eyes, because the teardrops just can’t stop falling, can’t stop welling up and turning her vision cloudy.  She can’t make out the shape of him, let alone being able to see what expression he has on his face…and maybe that’s actually a good thing, because she’s not sure she can handle the sight of him turning away from her, of him walking out the door.

So she closes her eyes instead and wills her lips to say the words she could not bear to see: “Goodbye, Jaiden.”

 

 

 

“Look at me.”

Her eyes fly open at those words. Surely it must be a dream, a figment of her imagination, for Jaiden is still standing there in front of her.

He’s clenching his jaw, right hand curled into a fist so tight it feels like his veins might pop any second now. The softness that always glazes his eyes when he looks at her is gone, replaced by a hard stare and barely concealed anger, the ferocity of which she has never thought he is capable of producing, let alone directing it at her. Though given what had just transpired, he has every right to be angry. For he had been lied to, tricked into a relationship that was doomed right from the very start, fooled into believing that her shyness was the only thing that made her unable to go any further than a kiss all those times and that one day, one day, she would be able to give her all to him.

So she pulls her shoulders together and braces herself for the inevitable, for him to tell her all those words and walk out the door right after.

Except he doesn’t. He doesn’t do any of those things. Just continues to stare at her like that is the only thing he is capable of doing at this moment.

 

When he opens his mouth at last, the words that come out are nothing like what she expected.

“W-What did you say?”

“I said: You’re wrong.”

A harsh breath escapes him, and she can see how hard he is trying to hold onto his composure.

“You don’t have to hold yourself back, Jaiden. I know you are angry, I know you want to scream at me, so just let it out. Please don’t hold yourself back for me any longer.”

“ANGRY?!” He all but shouts at her. “Angry doesn’t even describe a _fraction_ of what I am feeling!”

Breathing by nose is now an impossible task for him, it seems, for he opens his mouth again to take a lungful of breath.

Tears well up in her eyes again. “I’m sorr-”

“STOP _SAYING_ THAT! Stop apologizing to me. Just stop.”

“What else can I say then?!” Now she is screaming too. “I don’t even know why you’re still here! You should be cursing at me. You should be walking out the door! I just told you that I’ve been lying to you all this time. So why are you still here, Jaiden? When will you stop being so kind to me?!”

“You’re wrong,” he tells her once again, “I have never been kind to you.”

“What are you-”

“The first time I ever said the words ‘I love you’ out loud, was right after I had stolen a kiss from you. Was that kindness? Was I being kind when I kept pushing your limits with every date we had, by brushing my fingers over your thigh, by sneaking a hand under your shirt, coaxing your lips open so I could push my way in? When I ignored every look of discomfort that flashes by your eyes in those moments, thinking to myself that you’re just shy and will come around eventually?”

“Jaiden-”

“How could you possibly call me _kind_ when I did all of that and more? Because what all of those actions say, is simply this: My love for you is contingent upon me being able to put my dick into your ass one day.” She flinches at his crude words. “And if that doesn’t make me a total scumbag, no better than some sexual pervert on the streets, then I don’t know what does.”

Before she can even put her thoughts in order to give a reply, he continues on: “You were wrong. It’s not me who deserves better, it’s you. You deserve a boyfriend who makes you feel loved in every sense of the word, not someone who makes you feel inadequate for being who you are. And even if today is the first time I ever heard the word ‘asexuality’, it still doesn’t excuse my actions. It’s not you who should be apologizing. It’s me. And the one who should be walking out the door is you.”

He sinks to his knees after that.

“When you told me you are ace, it wasn’t disappointment or hurt I felt for having been lied to, it was pure rage, because how fucking _blind_ could I have possibly been, to not have known the turmoil that plagues your mind whenever you’re with me, to not have recognized the signs of discomfort on your face all this while? And to think that you’ve let me come on to you even though you don’t like it… Shame, I was filled with absolute shame at what a sorry excuse of a human being I am. But the worst thing is,” he looks up at her then, his eyes also rimmed with tears, “Amidst all of that, a part of me was still selfish enough to _hope_ that you won’t actually walk out the door and leave me if I grovel and beg for your forgiveness, because I am scumbag to the end that way.”

 

This man _, this impossible man_ , what is she supposed to do with him?

 

There are days when she wishes she could just undo everything, wishes that she never met him in the first place, because surely it wouldn’t hurt as much as it does now.

 

Except she remembers.

 

She remembers this guy who walked into her bakery café more than a year ago, asking for a customized cake from her because his co-worker had told him that she is ‘the best pastry chef in the damn city’.  His best friend’s birthday was coming up and given that they have not seen each other the past few years, ever since he went to study abroad, he was determined to go the whole nine yards this time to make it up.

Except when she asked him what kind of cake he wants, his ears turned red as he mumbled that he actually ‘has no idea’. So she sat down with him and spent almost an hour helping him design the cake. In that span of time, she discovered that he looks like a kitten when he smiles with his curled lips, which was a little bit too often for her taste, as he talked animatedly about his best friend, though insults were thrown in as much as words of affection. Later on, she would realize that she has learned way too much about the pair of them in that hour, and has revealed just about as much to him about her in return. He really was too easy to talk to.

He came back a week later to pick up the cake and then the very next day, showed up with a grin on his face as he handed her a Polaroid photo of him and his BFF posing next to the half-eaten cake.

“In all the 24 years I have known him, Bryn just never shuts up. He talks and talks as if the world will end if he doesn’t fill it with his, and I quote, ‘heavenly voice’. He also rarely cries. And yet, yesterday, for the first time ever, I have managed to render him speechless and near tears. Because of your cake,” he said with so much pride in his voice that she couldn’t help but laugh.

He then told her to keep the photo pinned somewhere, so that it can act as a constant reminder of the magic that happens when someone eats the cakes she makes.

 

Two months later, he had established himself as a regular at the store. This she only learned after hearing the front staff gossiping about a certain ‘Korean guy who orders way too much coffee in the 2 hours he sits at the store’, and how none of them is able to resist saying no to his refill requests because ‘he looks like a kitten when he smiles and tips them extra’ in return.

She didn’t know what propelled her feet forward then to plop down onto the seat opposite of him, flashing him an impish grin when he looked up in surprise, before saying: “Hello, stranger.”

Maybe she just wanted to ascertain that he was a real person, and not a figment of her imagination that she conjured up all those months ago (in hindsight, the Polaroid photo stuck on the wall next to her desk at home should have been enough proof).  

“What’s your excuse for not bothering to say hi to me this whole while, huh?”

A beat passed. He smiled in that kitten-like way of his as her words sunk in and recognition dawned: “For the record, you haven’t said hi to me the whole time either.’

“Touché.”

 

After that exchange, she started to seek him out during her breaks just so she could switch out his coffee for tea because his reactions always cracked her up, and he started to badger her in return whenever she was in the front agonizing over her display case, making stupid jokes and asking her for cake recommendations. They may or may have not spent time after her shifts talking about inane things every once in a while.

Somewhere along the way, they became friends. She came to that realization one day when:

  1. He told her, in an eerily calm voice, thumbs tracing over every single burn he could find on her hands and wrists, that if she cares about her baking career at all, then she will stop sacrificing sleep in favour of watching k-dramas until the wee hours of dawn; and
  2. She finally took note of the fact that it may have possibly been well over two weeks since she last saw him drinking coffee in the store, and when she pointed this out, he hid his mouth behind a cup that smelled suspiciously like apple cinnamon tea and mumbled about how a ‘certain someone’ kept telling him too much coffee was bad for him.



 

She remembers how they became friends, how they became lovers, and every moment in between.

 

She remembers him making disgruntled faces at her as she rambled on and on about this book series she read recently, unable to contain her feels, only to receive the whole set of said series for Christmas the same year, despite it being out of print.

She remembers him singing to her over the phone on the nights she couldn’t sleep, even though he was grumbling at her for waking him in the middle of night just moments prior.

She remembers him being courageous enough to make a cake for her on her birthday one year, even though baking was her domain to rule. Remembers him learning how to cook Japanese food ( ~~her favourite~~ ) and boasting to her about how he makes better _chawanmushi_ than her, and her not being able to say a single word in retaliation because it was the truth.

She remembers him trying to be as discreet as possible about the stray cats he keeps in his apartment whenever she visits, because while he knows she’s not much of a cat person, he still can never find the heart to turn them away.

She remembers him crying to her about how he couldn’t, for the life of him, seem to be able to string together a decent Best Man’s speech for one of his friend’s wedding, about how much he hates ‘those two fucking idiots’ for making him suffer like this. Remembers how fast he had said yes to them when they first asked him to fill out the role, well aware that he was only crying now because he was recalling way too many fond memories about his stupid friends and their ‘less than stellar way of getting together’.

She remembers him whining about how curly his hair gets after a shower, face turning into a scowl when she compares it to Shin Ramyun, until he recalled that it is her favourite brand and the all-too-pleased kitten smile returns full-force. “So what you’re telling me is I’m your favourite~” She resisted the urge to kick him the shin then. For maybe half a minute.

She remembers that he makes lame jokes, likes to tease her despite knowing that she can easily flatten him using her black belt in Taekwondo because he has no fear, or maybe he’s just a masochist with a death wish.

 

She remembers all these little things and thinks to herself: _He’s the biggest idiot alive._

 

 

Also: _But I don’t regret meeting him._

 

 

 

 

Or: _Falling in love with him._

 

“Jaiden,” she calls out to him at last.

His head jerks up, and he looks at her as if he can’t believe she is still here, still standing in front of him and oh, what a reversal it is from how she felt just moments prior.

“H-How are you stil-”

“I’m still here because you didn’t walk away. Because if you didn’t walk away from me earlier despite having every right to, then why should I do so now when our roles are reversed? When I thought you would be angry at me for having lied to you, you directed the anger at _yourself_ instead for failing to recognize the signs. ‘What a terrible girlfriend I have been’, is what I told myself, but then you went and called yourself a ‘total scumbag’ for not knowing your advances were unwanted. And then the worst part of all is this, is you still looking at me with that softness in your eyes, as if I am still your most precious person in the world, like you know I deserve someone so much better but you can’t help but long for me anyway, a-and…how, how am I supposed to walk away from that? Jaiden, tell me how am I supposed to stop loving you?”

“You’re asking _me_ that? When it should be me who asked that question? You thought I would stop loving you the day you tell me you’re ace, thought I would stop wanting to be with you because you can’t have sex with me, and I just wanted to scream at the top of my lungs that you were wrong, you were dead wrong! I, I will never stop loving you, wanting to be with you, because God help me, I just simply don’t know _how to_.”

 

They are standing inches apart from each other, both breathing hard through their mouths, eyes never leaving the other’s face, as if that alone would stop the other from disappearing from their sight.

She takes the first step forward by reaching her hand out to grab his. He looks down at their hands and then up at her face, eyes searching, confusion evident on his countenance.

“W-What are yo-”

“Sshh, it’s okay. I’m okay,” she squeezes his hand.

“But you said-”

“I still don’t want to have sex with you, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to touch you at all.”

“So hand-holding is okay?”

“Most of the times, yes, but not for too long.”

“Anything else you’re okay with?”

She moves closer and brushes her lips over his tear-stained cheek.

“That’s okay with me too.”

“Kissing?”

“On the cheek, yes.”

“What about hugs? Or cuddles?”

A wobbly laugh escapes her, because Jaiden Kim is all about cuddles more than anything.

“I’m okay with both, though there might be days when I won’t be.” _Like today_ , went unsaid.

“W-Will you tell me when I do something unwanted? If I overstep your boundaries?”

A beat passes.

“I will,” she says at last.

“Will you still be with me despite knowing what a scumbag I have been?”

“Stop calling yourself that,” she chides, “and yes, I will, for as long as you still want me.”

“I will always want you-I mean, not in a sexual way… except actually I do want you in that sense too, if I am to be honest, which I should be if I am to ask you to do the same—being honest even when it hurts…What I meant to say is I will still want to be with you even if we can never kiss on the lips or do anything more than that.”

“How can you be so sure, Jaiden?”

“Well, how can you?

“I-”

“Exactly. How can we be sure our relationship will work or fail if we don’t at least give it one more chance? Because I’m willing to give it a second try, willing to learn everything about you all over again. What about you?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“You do know. You didn’t walk away after all. You’re still here, standing with me, and I think that’s enough of an answer, yes?”

Seconds tick by before she slowly nods in reply.

 

“Let’s start again. My name is Jaiden Kim. What is yours, stranger?”

He’s smiling at her again, lips curled up at the fringes like they always do.

She takes a deep breath before giving him a cheeky reply like the first time he asked for her name.

“I believe someone once called me ‘the best pastry chef in the damn city’. I wonder if that is still true?”

“Always,” is his answer. Means: _I love you_. 

She smiles in return. Means: _I love you too_.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read until here, then thank you, with all of my heart. Feel free to scream at me on [Tumblr](http://peach-blossoms.tumblr.com/) :p


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